Coming up right now on Art Rocks, the watercolor character series Scary Little Bunnies and the Baton Rouge mastermind behind it.

The painters who picked up where the Impressionists left off.

And the first museum exhibit dedicated to the artwork of The Burning Man.

All this.

Up next on Art Rocks Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana.

Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you Hello.

Thank you for joining us for Art Rocks with me.

James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

Let's begin with a lesson about what happens when an artist stumbles on a couple of wooden, scary little bunny puppets in a New Orleans antique store.

Since then, Baton Rouge is Yvette Creole has made her scary bunny characters, the subject of many paintings, largely because her clients seem to love them.

Here's a vet to pick up the story scary little bunnies got started when I rescued them from an antique store down in the French Quarter.

They were wrapped in silk and they were on odd sticks.

I think that they were just so crudely made with all long, gangly legs and ears and I thought that it would be something maybe the children would like.

But really, it's just it's taken off with the adults and their love for old antique toys and nostalgia It's sort of that retro vibe to it was just kind of fun to maneuver them and to come up with some nice compositions.

It took a while to kind of find where I wanted them to go, and they didn't sell right away.

And then I found another niche for them and started adding nostalgic sort of rockets and robots.

They've sailed boats.

They've played Chinese checkers.

There was an art show around 2008 or nine called Stabbed in the Art, and it was once a month in Baton Rouge, and all of my pieces were large nature pieces, and they weren't going to sell to the demographic that was coming to visit the stabbed in the art show.

So I wanted to revamp and kind of come up with something fun and witty that would be affordable so that everyone can have one.

So it were considerably lower priced.

They appealed to a younger or maybe a little bit more trendy market, and it was just hit.

The first one where I brought five skinny little bunnies, they sold out.

They have their own personalities.

Chazz is the blue mischievous rabbit, and he's always kind of playing pranks or hanging upside down, hiding in clean laundry.

Whitman is much more scientific.

He does a lot of reading.

He likes poetry.

Those sorts of things.

So the things that complement his compositions are usually having to do with books or art or studies with Leonardo.

Those sorts of things.

I just appreciate them individually, and I think other people do, too.

I hope that they will evolve into a book right now.

I have a lot of the character development done, obviously, with Charles and Whitman, and they both have their own personalities.

And what I'm hoping to do is write an initial book that introduces them and then have a follow up book where a third character gets introduced.

I don't just paper scary little bunnies I also paint spheres bamboo, things that occur in nature patterns people Sometimes it's not as often, but sometimes it's in a much bigger scale.

And that's a little bit more rewarding for me.

One of my favorite characters is Grandpa from the French Quarter, and he's always playing music and he's playing harmonica and just always been a wonderful character and he always has the overalls and he has an amazing beard glasses with only one lens.

And I think that's one of the things I just really look for the character in people.

And he he's just an amazing example of that.

And so that's one of the pieces that I enjoyed the most, particularly the challenge of his white beard spheres have probably been my longest running series.

I have painted them made out of grass, out of paper, the mirrors, hammer, metal, engraved metal wood and always using them with different fabrics and just kind of coming up with the best composition.

If the sphere is itself super interesting, then making it huge to kind of reveal all of the details and if I have three or four of them, then getting a little bit of a zoom out so you can compose things a little differently, detail's important and then the spheres, I can usually get a lot of detail.

I went to the zoo to see the new baby rhino, and it's very large for a baby, but the mother was there and got a lot of pictures.

These two actually came out really nicely, one being just the the baby and the other one being that the mother and the baby There's also so much detail in their skin and the folds and the texture of it.

I really enjoy putting that together.

There's just such a wide variety of color and detail in the bamboo.

You can use it from a side.

You can cut it in the wheels.

You can stack it and just really kind of appreciate the geometric shapes of it and the balanced.

I only paint in watercolor because it's all that I've known.

My first professor with watercolor was maybe seventh or eighth grade, and that was Larry Corso in Baton Rouge.

And my mother's always paint in watercolor.

I use very small brushes.

So you're not going to make very big mistakes with very little but very little tools in the way that I like to work.

It started as a pattern, but now it's viewing the piece and kind of working from the inside out.

I do a lot of detail.

My work is very controlled.

It is difficult.

You have to think about saving your light and saving the light, and things are kind of planned.

The way that I work, it's not a whimsical look at that happy accident that doesn't it.

But there are elements of using mask to save the light and sketching everything out first and not just letting things happen.

It is only watercolor.

You can put it on this board.

It's called Aqua Bore, and then you seal it with an acrylic spray, which is why it doesn't have to be under glass.

And most of the scary little bunnies are on.

The more Our lives are tremendously enriched by enjoying the creative endeavors of others.

So here are some of our picks for notable exhibits happening soon at museums and galleries in our part of the world.

For more about these and loads more events in the creative space, visit El-P. Be dot org slash art rocks.

There you'll find links to each episode of the program.

So to see or share any segment again, visit El-P Borgman Art Rocks Moving on to depictions of a country which Louisianans feel close ties with France.

The end of the 19th century was a time of major political unrest and cultural transformation in France.

The so-called neo impressionists were a group of artists who captured not only the scenes, but also the mood of that era.

Let's visit the Columbus, Ohio Museum of Art to learn more about the work of these avant garde pioneers who picked up where the French impressionists left off Beyond Impressionism is an exciting partnership with the Guggenheim Bilbao, and it has over 100 works of art The title is about the fact that this whole show is about that period right after the peak of Impressionism.

Impressionism sort of peaks in the 1870s and maybe into the early 1880s.

And Impressionism was this breakout moment from modernism.

What we think about Monet and Renoir and this whole idea of painting the light, literally capturing moments of light.

So this was a huge breakthrough.

I mean, it changes the art and what happens in Western painting.

But it had sort of a terminus after you've done that.

What do you do with it?

You know, how do you, how do you, how do you extend that legacy?

How do you extend that revolution maybe more than legacy?

How do you extend that revolution?

So that was a challenge for the original impressionists like Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, but it was also a challenge for the artist coming after them.

And so this show is about that real turbulent time of the 1890s and the term.

And this is really sort of the opening of World War One.

It kind of goes from the 1890s into the very first decade of the 20th century.

Neil impression is no for this dot.

The idea of painting with his little dabs and these little dots.

It's very much connected to an artist named Sirah.

He was part of a group of artists that wanted to sort of get, get a hold of Impressionism because Impressionism started to get really sort of amorphous They wanted structure and organization The other thing you're going to discover in the exhibition is more about symbolism.

Symbolism.

The thing to remember about symbolism is it was a way of creating more of a subjective response in painting and graphic to art.

This is a great period of printmaking and graphic arts There's a wonderful artist called The Red Dawn.

He's very much about the dream, the interstate.

It's all subjective.

It's just just the opposite then of Impressionism in that sense.

He was very interested in not just dreams, but nightmares.

And he's interested as a native by Edgar Allan Poe, It almost was like day and night.

He goes from these very kind of dark, dark dreams, dark thoughts and sort of horror kind of lays things to these luminous pictures which are very like, you know, sort of transform transformation.

In the other sense, they they lift you up The third thing that you'll discover is this was the period of the birth of celebrity culture and advertising that we now are the heirs of This was a period filled with these Logoglu Jane of real all these characters.

And they would have been as well known to the people of Paris as Beyonce is to us.

Neo Impressionism does grow out of Impressionism.

And you can't have any of these pictures without Monet.

You can't get to these pictures not going through Monet and her.

And so I think they are the children of the impressionist revolution.

So this period, I think, often gets overlooked But they were fantastic pictures John Cash is a renowned caricaturist.

Born and raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Casts works can now be found in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and have appeared in publications all over the country.

Let's listen.

As Kash explains, how caricature works is a specialized form of portraiture, one that amplifies the subject's characteristics to reveal the true essence of a person There's a conception, and it's a misconception that caricature is about distortion.

What makes people think of distortion is that it's very exaggerated and very amplified.

But there's a big difference there.

I'm amplifying in the direction of what makes that person unique.

My name is John Kast, and I am a caricaturist Caricatures, not cartooning.

It's not illustration.

It's not a comic strip.

Caricature is a very specialized form of portraiture.

Like all portraits, caricatures are interested in nailing the likeness What it is, is an investigation into exactly what makes a person unique.

And if you find the things that make you different from everybody else, and then those things get amplified, and the more of the nuances that make that person unique that I can observe and then get into a drawing, the more complete the likenesses and the and the greater the recognition on the part of the person looking at it where they say, Yes, I recognize that person I was very much that kid in the back class drawing the teachers.

And the thing about me is I never stopped.

I'm still kind of drawing the teachers or the authority figures anyway.

But now it's politicians, performers, you know, that kind of thing.

I've drawn primarily celebrities or, you know, notable public figures.

So when I'm drawing an idea that I have, I usually do very quick thumbnail sketches just to kind of start mapping out the the way the piece could look.

I draw on vellum, transparent vellum, so that if I was something in a sketch that I like, I'll slide it under a fresh sheet, draw over the top of it and keep the parts I like.

Don't keep the books I don't like until eventually I've got the fully realized sketch that I want to paint from.

I use watercolor and paint in light layers of glaze.

Ideally, if I have 16 hours to 20 hours on something, you know, obviously each piece has its own requirements, but 16 to 20 hours is a great amount of time for me for an average piece of my style.

The Waukesha County Historic Society Museum was founded in 1914, so we've got more than 100 years behind us of celebrating what this region, what Waukesha County has to offer in the world and what impacts we've made in the world.

Making Faces is our future exhibition.

The artist John Couch is originally from Waukesha City, Waukesha, a graduate of Catholic Memorial High School, just a mile and a quarter down the road from here.

And so a really lovely way to celebrate someone from this part of the world and to really take and appreciate his accomplishment the wonderful nature of the work that John does is that he is the artist gets to retain very often the original that he makes.

And so he's been kind of sitting on this incredible back catalog.

30 years worth of work.

The exhibition here is a collection of about 100 ish pieces that are my favorites Bill Murray is one of the large format prints, and we put him kind of front and center right inside the gallery space as you walk.

And so we really start with just in general, what goes into his character in portraiture work, things like body language and also what the process is to get to a finished product and really take people on that journey from appreciating what this art form can be when it's done to the expert level that John's able to achieve on through its multiple iterations and kind of uses My favorite piece is a first piece of work he ever sold.

It's a political cartoon that he sold to the Waukesha Freeman.

One day I just went down to the Waukesha Freeman offices with a bunch of my drawings of the teachers of family members, and I just I went in and asked to see the editor because I had in my mind that I wanted to do political cartoons because that's where I was seeing caricature work.

Jim Houston is his name.

He was the editor of the Freeman at the time.

I think because he was puzzled.

He agreed to meet with me.

I was 14.

And amazingly, he said I could submit cartoons to them.

And in retrospect, I realize he did me a great favor, a great service there.

Professionally, he took me seriously at that age, and I started identifying myself as as a professional and to to start with that piece and to be able to see everything that's come after that is just this incredible story of what a lifetime of work can do.

My favorite things in the exhibition actually are the sketches, because to me that's where the creativity really is.

The likeness is happening or it's not.

And when it's not, boy, it can be tough.

But then when I finally capture it, it's really still, to me, feels like a miracle when that person is looking back at me from the paper with caricature, you think of, you know, big nose, big chin, big ears, that stuff's all a part of it.

But so are nuances like a person's particular skin tone.

Do they slouch?

Do they sit up straight?

How do they use their hands a lot.

Are they more contained and don't reveal much?

All of those nuances convey ultimately who we are on the inside I'm still amazed that how we hold ourselves outwardly so, so much and so accurately, who we are in the inside I feel in some ways I'm trying to learn about myself one person at a time.

Now, let's go behind the scenes at the Hermitage Museum and Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia, to learn what went into creating their acclaimed exhibit, The Art of Burning Man.

It's the first museum exhibit dedicated to the artwork created during the annual event which takes place in the Black Rock Desert of north west Nevada.

Let's take a look Burning Man is guided by ten principles, and we want to allow those ten principles to govern our exhibition.

The two principles that we are most tapping into is communal effort and participation.

We want this to be the communities exhibition, not just the Hermitage exhibition.

Unless you can score a ticket to go to Burning Man, The access to this art is very limited.

Our goal was to take that artwork off of the player and reach a broader audience.

So a Burning Man, you know, we've got the beautiful desert tableau.

It's gorgeous canvas, very surreal and dreamlike.

And here we're embedded in this green, lush landscape, which is a different thing.

Equally beautiful I'm putting my sculptures in nature is pretty much the dream come true here.

As I put a little slice down the middle, it helps it for the kind of motive behind all Burning Man art is inclusivity and community and art as a vehicle for that.

When you walk up to America, of course, you're drawn to your own image, the narrow focus, the myopic focus.

But when you step away, you see this image of unity.

It's the collective self.

The greater I I can see that the Hermitage is reaching out to the next generation of art.

The older generation is still valid, but how do you bring the younger generation to the older generation?

You bring the new generation in and it mix it together.

I'm just patching up tiles right now that have popped off in the transport and install they're all from churches that we found at different thrift stores.

There's a dump that we live near and we go there and just kind of get people's discarded items and it's kind of just like a big explosion, but found objects, I guess, and then throwaway confessional to get people to interact with each other.

Like streetcars, So one of the consistent challenges that I'm hearing from each team is the concerns about the long term installation because when they set this stuff up at Burning Man, it's up for a week or two.

We're having this up for over four months, and the environment here is very different.

So we had to really galvanize the the frame, the structure, because it was covered with playa dust.

There you're dealing with really aggressive dust that's really toxic, and it has a lot of elements that just really tear things apart and cause fatigue both on the human body and on the materials.

I mean, this weather, this humidity is totally not what we're used to.

The desert is so dry that it wants to suck you clean of all your water.

But I mean, this place is we're in the jungle in the tropics, man.

But for us, at least, it's one thing that happens in the desert is that even these really large pieces get absorbed into this huge space and this feels so much more intimate.

All of the pieces here, I think, fit so nicely into these little vignettes.

Yeah.

When I die, remember me?

A scholar in the backseat of a golden pile.

You put the windows down that AC up and hit me on my lap in a slow rack.

I'm so grateful and appreciative of the experience and the amazing community that came to support this event.

And all the artists that are here.

Everybody came in to bring this thing together.

And look at tonight how much collaboration for the whole and bringing a thousand people here at the Hermitage.

That's incredible.

That decided what you have to find a letter read for your brain like an exercise in revenge.

At the very beginning, I thought I was dead forever.

But I'm alive and thriving every time I see somebody experience it for the first time, it's really rewarding.

For a moment, they fall into that childlike place of of wonder.

Like, that's what I'm trying to get to personally as people to let down their barriers and and understand that they can physically interact with this work and touch it and share that experience with somebody next to them and show them how to do it.

That's the art I was so happy that so many people out here will get a taste of what Burning Man is, and hopefully we'll bring more people out there, too.

It's very inspiring to be here around so many people that love this place and understand its value.

And you need to take this love and this inspiration and plant seeds of it throughout the world so it can grow and prosper because that's what the world needs.

It needs more community.

It needs for our love it needs more way.

I just want to be free.

No change.

So grab me.

Yes, I'll go get it.

Now, hold energy.

This is your final morning.

Maybe pop that break for me.

Oh, yeah.

Yes.

So now and that is that for this edition of Art Rocks.

But you can always share or see episodes of the show at LP B dot org slash art rocks.

And if you're wondering what else you might be missing.

Country Roads magazine makes a great resource for finding out what's going on in the arts and culture out and about in the Bayou State.

So until next week, I'm James Fox Smith, and thanks to you for watching.

Art Rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you and